


A Dance with Demons

by jrwilson



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:30:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jrwilson/pseuds/jrwilson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This fiction is also published on FF.net.   It is an alternate-universe story.   Valentine raised Clarissa and Jonathan Christopher as his own children, and told them that he needed to keep them a secret from the world. Clarissa escapes from the Wayland Manor and while hiding in New York, she meets Jace Herondale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dance with Demons

Chapter 1: Wayland Manor

Clarissa Wayland stared out of the wide window as sheets of rain slashed into the ground below. She let her forehead fall against the damp wet surface and she closed her eyes tight.

A weight descended on her shoulder, and she flinched away. “Jonathan? You aren’t supposed to be up here.”

“Father’s not here to impose his rules. I can do whatever I want.”

“He left again? He didn’t tell me.”

“He didn’t tell you because he doesn’t love you.”

“And you think he loves you? His ghost.”

Jonathan laughed. “I know he doesn’t love me. The difference between you and me, sweet sister, is that I don’t care.”

“You’re a monster.” She shrugged away from him, but as she did she noticed a trail of red swollen skin peaking out of his shirt.

She grimaced. “Did he hurt you again? Damn it. Let me see.”

He backed away. “I don’t want your pity.”

“Jonathan, please. You know I hate it when he hurts you.”

“Why do you care?” His black eyes narrowed.

She wanted to tell him that she loved him. She wanted to scream that he was her brother. But she knew that trying to appeal to him in that way was useless. He would just laugh and call her weak as he always did. Could she even love someone or was just as much of a demon as Jonathan? Her father had told them so many times that they were demons made flesh, his experiments. They had to stay hidden in this dark wasteland of a manor, so that no one would ever know that they existed. Jonathan was all she had, and no matter how awful he was, being alone scared her more than he did.

“If he kills you, I would be bored,” she said finally, knowing he would accept that answer as sound.

He nodded.

“Why did he do it this time?”

Jonathan’s lips turned up in a sly grin. “I found one of his secrets.”

“Really?”

“I’ll show you, if you want.”

“Only if you’re sure that Father is really gone.”

“I’m sure.” He grabbed her wrist and led her out of her bedroom in the tower, down a long winding set of stairs, and out of the manor past the stables.

He stopped at a small brick structure that was for the most part hidden by a tangle o vines. Clarissa stepped backward, breaking loose from Jonathan’s grasp.

“You know we can’t go in there. Father said ...”

“You care too much about Father’s rules.” He touched a loose strand of her copper curls. “Aren’t you curious?”

She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll let you heal me with a rune, if you wish.”

She sighed. He must really want her to go with him. He never let her heal him. He seemed to like wearing his scars as if they were badges of glory.

“Okay, Jonathan. I’ll go in with you.”

He pulled a large brass key from his pocket, and turned the key in the rusted padlock. The door squeaked loudly as it opened. Jonathan slipped inside, and she followed, feeling the odd dampness in the air stick to her skin. She shivered.

She followed Jonathan as he walked talked the center of the room. There was a large rectangular box covered with a wool blanket. Jonathan ripped the blanket away exposing a glass coffin. There was a beautiful woman laying on satin in the casement. Long red curls framed her face. Clarissa lifted her hand to touch her own red curls. Her features were sharp and angled, and her eyes were shut. She looked peaceful.

“She looks like me,” Clarissa said.

Jonathan nodded. “She’s our mother.”

Clarissa gasped. “Are you certain?”

“Father told me.”

Clarissa placed her hands on the glass. “Is she dead?”

Jonathan placed his hand on her shoulder. “No. I was thinking that maybe you could wake her up with one of your runes.”

Clarissa snorted. “Although I’m flattered at your assessment of my skills, I doubt I can just magic her awake. I have no idea what happened to her. Do you think Father did this? Do you think he froze her?”

Jonathan smirked. “Of course Father did it. And I bet you could wake her up if you really tried.”

“I’ll think about it,” Clarissa lied. She didn’t need to think about it. An image of a rune was already crystallizing in her mind. It was a rose bud, with one petal fighting to break away. The rose bud was set inside the iris of a wide eye. This was a very detailed image, and she wasn’t entirely sure she could draw it. She fingered her stele, in the pocket of her trousers. She would try, but not with Jonathan present.

“I’m disappointed, little sister.”

“My heart’s breaking,” she let the sarcasm drip heavily into the words.

Later that evening, well past the witching hour, Clarissa entered Jonathan’s bedroom and stared down at his sleeping form. He would be out well into the morning, she had made sure of it by slipping a dose of sleeping powder into the tea he always drank after dinner. She looked around the room, and saw the pants he had worn earlier tossed lazily over a chaise. She fumbled through the pockets until she felt the brass key that he had used earlier. She took a long hard breath. That had been easier than she expected. He was usually so careful with his possessions; maybe the sleeping powder had worked even better than she had hoped.

Trembling in a thick sweater, Clarissa stole across the grounds of the manor, a torch lighting her way. She stopped short at the vine-covered building. 

She inserted the key into the lock and turned it until she felt a hard click. Was she really going to do this? Her breath caught up in her throat. She could go back. She had been moving as if she was a puppet on a string ever since Jonathan had shown her the frozen form of the woman who could be her mother. If she went back she could pretend none of it had ever happened, and go right back to ... to the suffocating hell that was her life. She sighed, and pushed the heavy door open, letting the light from her torch illuminate the cloth covered glass case. Slowly, she approached it, her chest tight. She ripped the cloth away, exposing the woman. She wasn’t exactly sure how to open the case. She felt around the rim of the glass top with her fingers, until she felt a small depression. She pulled, and the top plate of glass inched open, and she kept pulling until she had completely removed the heavy glass top, which she struggled to place on the floor. She wondered if it would have shattered if she had let it drop unaided.

Her eyes darted back to the woman, whose fair skin almost glowed in the inky blackness. She set up the torch so that it illuminated the woman’s hands, and she started to draw. It was like it always was with a new rune. She lost control, and something inside of her took over - the demon blood. She had decided years ago that the reason she and Jonathan were so different was that his demon was integrated into his personality, but hers was there but somehow separate.

A light flooded the room. “I knew you could do it.” Jonathan’s voice seeped into the room.

She twisted away from the woman and glared at her brother. “You were asleep.”

“I was pretending. When will you ever learn that I’m smarter than you?”

Jonathan’s eyes widened, and Clarissa spun around to see what he was looking at. The woman was sitting up, her dark red hair cascading down her shoulders. She raised her arms up and yawned.

“Mother?” Jonathan said, taking a step towards her and Clarissa.

“What?” The woman said. “Who are you?”

“We’re your children,” Jonathan said.

“No, no, no. That’s not possible,” she said. She glanced around the dark confines. “Where are we?”

“Wayland manor,” he told her. “And you’re Jocelyn Wayland.”

“No, I’m not,” she responded. “I’m Jocelyn Fairchild. No, I was Jocelyn Fairchild. Now I’m Jocelyn Morgenstern.”

He shook his head fiercely. “You married Michael Wayland.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I did not.”

“Look,” Clarissa said, a not of soft desperation in her voice. “Clearly there are some details to work out. We aren’t certain that you’re our mother. It was a guess. We don’t really know who you are at all. How about you come into the house with us and we fix you something to eat and drink?”

Jocelyn touched the rim of the glass case. “What happened to me?”

“We think our father froze you with some sort of magic. We don’t know how long you’ve been here. Why don’t you come inside with us?”

Clarrisa offered her hand to Jocelyn and helped her climb out of the case.

Once she was standing, Jocelyn touched Clarissa’s hair. “You look like me,” she said. “How old are you? What’s your name?”

“Fifteen and my name is Clarissa Wayland.”

“I named my daughter Clarissa. She was just a little baby in my arms. Could Valentine really have frozen me for fifteen years?”

“Our Father’s name is Michael,” Jonathan insisted, moving toward her. He touched her arm and she shrank away from him. “Oh god, you’re him. This can’t be real, it just can’t.”

“I’m who? Who do you think I am?”

“My son, Jonathan Christopher. I thought I killed you.”

Jonathan narrowed his eyes. “Killed me? Why would you kill me? I’m your son.”

“You’re a monster. Valentine corrupted you. I was doing the world a service,” she hissed, and then looked down at her hands. “He must have tricked me. The last thing I remember is holding your dead body in my arms. He must have found a way to save you.”

Clarissa knew in her heart that there was something deeply wrong with her brother, but she also knew that he had held on to a belief that he would find their mother someday and once he found her, she would save him from himself. She stared deep into his eyes and watched as the last remaining spark of hope drained out of their inky depths. She flicked her head back at the woman, hatred seeping through her veins. How dare this woman - this stranger - destroy her brother?

Clarissa touched Jonathan’s arm, and he flinched away from her. “Don’t touch me.” He turned back to the woman. “What about Clarissa? Is she a monster too? I’ve always wondered.”

“No,” the woman said softly. “I never let him experiment with her. I kept her safe.”

Jonathan looked at Clarissa, his black eyes flashing. She cringed, feeling oddly as if she had betrayed him somehow. He turned and fled the room. 

Clarissa intended to follow him, but the woman grabbed her arm, stopping her with surprising strength.

“He’s not yours. You may think he is, but you’re wrong.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. He’s all I have. He’s my brother,” Clarissa responded.

“You’re gravely mistaken. Look, I have to leave now before Valentine returns and it’s too late, but ...” the woman stumbled. “You may think you don’t need me now, but you may change you’re mind. Magnus Bane can find me. He’s likely somewhere in New York City.”

Clarissa shook her head, she had never heard of Magnus Bane or New York City. “I won’t need you.”

“We’ll see.” The woman’s eyes flashed as she snatched the stele out of Clarissa’s hand, and quickly drew a small symbol on her forearm, and then she disappeared, the stele clattering to the floor. 

Clarissa was good with runes, better than she should be, as her father always said. She hadn’t recognized the rune the woman had drawn, but she memorized it quickly, filing it away for later use.

Clarissa ran out of the building, trying to think her way through Jonathan’s steps. Even though their father would be angry, Jonathan would want to tell him about the woman. She wondered briefly if he would find some way to blame her for the events that led to the woman’s escape - probably. She went after him anyway. He was her brother. He was all she had.

She finally found him sitting in a leather recliner in their father’s office, sifting through files from their father’s locked cabinets.

“Father won’t be happy. He’ll know you were in here.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Jonathan, it does matter. You know how he gets when you defy him. He’ll hurt you again.”

Ignoring her, he threw the file on the floor and grabbed another from the cabinet.

“Jonathan - talk to me. Please.”

He stared up at her. “You’re nothing to me.”

“That’s not true,” she whispered.

“I thought we were the same, but apparently I was wrong.”

She closed her eyes. “We are the same.”

“We are not!” He screamed. “We are not the same. You are nobody - just a human girl, like a million others. I am so much more than human. Do you know that Father tried to kill me today? He said that he had made a mistake. He thought he could use me in his secret plans for a war with the council and the down-worlders, but after much consideration he had decided that I was too dangerous and that he would have to put me down like a mad dog.”

“He tried to kill you? What do you mean? That can’t be true.”

He scowled at her. “You think you know everything. You know nothing.”

“Jonathan, where is father?”

Jonathan smiled a sweetly sickening smile. “Why dear sister, he’s in his bedroom. Why don’t you check on him, while I continue going through father’s study? Then we’ll have a little chat. I’ll have to decide what to do with you and mother.”

She backed slowly out of the room. Jonathan didn’t know that the woman had portaled out of the manor house. Their father had always said that they could never leave the grounds. There was only one way out, and he would never tell them. That must be what Jonathan was looking for in Father’s documents - a way out. But the rune the woman had used worked, and Clarissa remembered it.

Once she was out of earshot of the study she ran up to their father’s bedchamber, and forced open the heavy oak door. 

A vinyl cord was strung around her father’s neck, and he was strung up to a hook that had somehow been jammed into the plaster of the ceiling. He was naked. She had never seen him naked before; it made her feel as if looking at him was somehow wrong. Looking up towards his face, it was apparent that his eyes had been ripped out. She walked around, and saw that narrow strips of his skin had been flayed from his backside. Perhaps Jonathan had tortured him. She felt as if she should feel pity for her father, but she didn’t. She just felt cold. She closed her eyes. What was she supposed to do now? Her father was dead; her newly found mother was on the run; and Jonathan was wrapped up in a nightmare. She licked her lips. She wouldn’t be able to pull him out of it - not alone. Maybe their mother could do something. She owed them more than a flash appearance in their lives. If anyone could reason with Jonathan, it would have to be woman claiming to be their mother. He had clung to the hope of her for so long. Of course, she hadn’t seemed to be brimming with love for either of them, but Clarissa wondered if she could fashion a rune to change that. She’d have to consider. Either way, she couldn’t stay here. Jonathan was raging, and without their father here to keep him in check, she wasn’t certain she was safe. She ran back up to her room, and packed a small bag with a change of clothes and the small collection of jewelry her father had given her over the years - it must be worth something in the larger world. She pulled out the stele from her pocket and hastily sketched the rune she had seen the woman draw on her left forearm. She felt the air sizzle and crack and she wasn’t in her room anymore. The stele was gone, but the bag holding her few possessions was still across her shoulder. She wondered idly why the stele hadn’t been transported with her, but the bag had made the journey. A mystery. She took a deep breath and analyzed her surroundings. She was in a tight space. There was an odd door in front of her with a latch keeping it shut. She turned around and faced a toilet, and a strange contraption that stored toilet paper. Stranger and stranger. There were female voices buzzing around her. This was it. Brave new world. She fiddled with latch, and opened the door.


End file.
